


a place in the sun

by glassy_light



Series: all i want [1]
Category: My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Wrote this months ago, also yeah this makes no sense <3, lit rally makes no cents luv xoxo, posting now cos i feel bad about never updating/posting anything lol, title is from a song of the same name by the marine girls!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23084266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassy_light/pseuds/glassy_light
Relationships: Scott Favor/Mike Waters
Series: all i want [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1659085
Kudos: 14





	a place in the sun

It felt like he was drifting through life a passive object. Like he was experiencing the whole world while looking out from some deep channel into the back of his head, seeing only fragments, fading in and out of himself. Like he was a piece of a jigsaw mixed up in a different set. Mike was part of the landscape, but he didn’t fit in; a temporary fixture.

Scott did fit, slipped through it with ease; clicked with everyone. Everyone liked him. It was Mike’s nearness to Scott, the underbelly’s golden boy, that granted him passage into this little locked corner of Portland. He fit in, but the way a ghost fits in: he was hovering just out of view. It was alright. It was how it had always been, ever since he was a kid, sewn in as an afterthought of a different fabric.

The hotel in any other place would have been deemed condemned, unfit, structurally unsound and likely about to collapse, but they crept in and made it theirs, the whole pack of them. For lack of furnishings, they slept in great heaps of heaving lungs and hot skin on the wood floor, stealing and scratching and laughing. They all did the same things for money, sure, but he felt isolated in that he could, maybe, live that way for free and like it. He kept a lit candle of hope burning in a locked alcove, right above his heart, that maybe Scott was the same. But he knew, even as the wax dripped and relit and spilled burning, that this was a phase Scott had the luxury of slipping into like the finely tailored suits that lined his closet.

But for now, he was ok. Here with Scott he was perfect; he could be happy in their nearness and the fact that, for at least another cold spring morning, he had his place in the sun secured. Could convince himself that the warm grass and dust of the big field just off the highway was an eternal facet of his life. Mike could stretch out in the heat with Scott’s head on his stomach and have him feel his heart on the back of his neck, and stay like that till forever had come and gone and he was in some white empty space his for the taking.

“Do you think we're here for good?” Mike had one hand raised up against the sky and he was staring at it.

“What?” 

“I said do you think…” There was a familiar twitch and pull back into that deep internal channel into the back of his head, the world still rushing vaguely on like waves against the sand he was buried in. It happened often and there was nothing to be done but sit on the inside and look into the dark till it ran with sparks and odd circles of color. They moved around him, and he could watch them buzz against the windows, but he couldn't pin like an insect on cardboard for safekeeping.

When he roused from that odd internal womb, the heavy stone lid of his sepulcher grinding back and letting the Idaho sun spill in, he was stretched out in the warm grass. The dust was still there, the sky and the road, too. Mike sat up and tried to stop his head from swimming with the heel of his palm a steady pressure at his temple.

“...You had another episode.” Scott was there, a foot away, twisting prairie grass in little loops between his fingers. His face looked soft and open, like chalk ready to absorb anything. MIke just sat and looked over the road carving it’s burning yellow line through the landscape below them until the sun was cooling on the horizon. The grass was cooling, too, and the crickets were sputtering to action. Scott watched and took it in and fiddle with the lace of his dress shoe, pulling in Mike and the silence and the noise like a sponge.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah what?”

“We’re here for good, you know, stuck in…” _it like mud_ , but he didn’t say that, just let the sentence snap like the clouds, at the rate they were graying, were going to. Scott nodded and opened his mouth and closed it, did it a few more times like a fish on land. Then smiled.

“We should head back. Before the rain.”

“Sure.” And when Scott pulled hm to his feet, his hands were warm. There was a pit in his stomach but he ignored it to press his face into the nape of Scott’s neck as the motorcycle shuddered to a pained start. It smelled like rain in the raw blue twilight, and it felt like the whole world was obliviously looking through them. Mike watched the yellow line whip by like a ribbon, constant hot yellow next to the tire. His cheek was pressed into feathery hair. The rain threatened but passed overhead with a slow and lazy growl.

That night, heaped onto a mattress in a back corner of the little hotel, pressed together like leopards all tangled in the jungle, Mike listened with closed eyes to Scott’s slow breathing and the distant thunder. He thought about the dust and the road.

“Scott.”

“Mmmm?” He shifted awake, chest rumbling. His chin was digging into Mike’s shoulder and he was breathing loudly in his ear. 

“Can we go back?” 

“What?” His cold hand was pressing against Mike’s chest, right over the heat of that candle. Mike didn’t say anything for a moment, just let the silence in. Deep in the building, someone was laughing. Scott’s breathing was drifting off again along with the conversation that he seemed to have effectively untethered. 

It would be fine. They would go back and lay in the sun. There would be more warm days. Maybe, just maybe, Scott would even get rid of those dress shoes and button-downs, throw his father out the window and the dregs of his old life with him. And they could stay that way, melting together in the dark, and be content for it. He listened to Scott’s breathing and the sounds down in the street, and eventually fell into hollow sleep. The candle still burned.


End file.
